3 charged in US with aiding Somali terror group

A federal grand jury has charged three men, including one from St. Louis and one from Minneapolis, with conspiring to funnel money to a terrorist group in Somalia that the U.S. says has ties to al-Qaida.

In an indictment returned Oct. 21 and unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in St. Louis, prosecutors charged St. Louis taxi driver Mohamud Abdi Yusuf, a Somali national who immigrated to the U.S. as a refugee, with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and three counts of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization - the radical Islamist group al-Shabab.

The government contends that Yusuf and Abdi Mahdi Hussein sent money through a Minneapolis wire-transfer business where Hussein worked to al-Shabab supporters in Somalia between 2008 and at least July 2009. Hussein, who is also of Somali descent, is charged with one count of conspiracy to structure monetary transactions. Yusuf also faces that count.